Many alternative fuels that may help slow down global warming suffer from technical barriers. Hydrogen and methane gas (also called 'natural gas') are both more environmentally friendly than gasoline, but contain very little energy per unit of volume. This video shows how self-assembled porous materials can lead to fuel tanks that are able to highly concentrate gaseous fuels and thus hold a lot of energy in a small space. Cutting edge algorithms and materials are depicted, drawing from research and development in the previous two years at Northwestern University in the Snurr and Hupp laboratories.

This video was created for the 2011 NSF International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge.

We would like to thank the Initiative for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern (ISEN) and Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan for supporting this research. Computational resources for simulations were provided by the QUEST super computer at Northwestern University.